Kasautii Zindagii Kay First Episode REVIEW: Erica Fernandes and Parth Samthaan impress us

The much-hyped reboot, Kasautii Zindagii Kay, finally premiered last night on Star Plus. With the show, Erica Fernandes returns to TV with a romantic saga where Parth Samthaan plays the male lead. The supporting cast for the show includes Pooja Banerjee who plays the role of Nivedita Basu, a pivotal character. As the show premiered, we couldn’t help but dwell in nostalgia, a reaction Ekta Kapoor probably wanted to extract, thanks to the music, the characters and more so the feel to the show. Clean bowled, there! 

Ekta has kept the story of the show similar to the original. Kasautii is a story of two lovers divided by class who live for each other. The class divide between Prerna (Erica) and Anurag’s (Parth) family was made quite obvious not once but many times during the 37 minutes first episode. Ekta’s love for symbolism dominated the episode as well with the flying dupatta slowly brushing Anurag’s face to the duo accidentally doing the maha aarti together. Borrowing some iconic moments from the original, Ekta presented the reboot in a far more grand way, however, it lacked the modern touch which everyone perhaps wanted to see. 

Though it is still the first episode, what we would have loved to see is the treatment to the reboot, which we expected to be more 2018. However, with an exact recreation of a few scenes, it looked like Ekta wanted us to travel back to the 2000s. Nonetheless, Parth fits the bill of Anurag seamlessly. While I am sure some of us had our reservations about him being able to pull off the role, Parth really surprised us. On the other hand, Erica as Prerna though reminded us of her previous character Sonakshi Bose from Kuch Rang Pyar Ke Aise Bhi, pulled off Prerna. The two really left us impressed given the huge responsibility they had. 

Moving over, we get it, the red dupatta is symbolic but the overuse of it left us exhausted. But we absolutely and irrevocably enjoyed the title track which is also the theme song of the show. The picturisation is done very aesthetically and we loved the small bickering between Anurag and Prerna. Erica and Parth’s pairing looks decent on screen, if not seamless. Moving over, Pooja as Nivedita stole the show in that 2-minute scene where her anguish as a neglected daughter was palpable.

Ekta had a huge responsibility of maintaining a balance between old and new and while old dominated the first episode, we are hoping to see a lot of new in the following episodes. 

Overall, it was a good watch but we wish to see a modern touch to the love saga. Also, we cannot wait to see Hina Khan enter as Komolika on the show.